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Musee D’Orsay, Lost in Harlem, France

Today we walked to the Musee D’Orsay. It used to be a train station, but now it houses some of the most beautiful impressionistic paintings in the world, although we weren’t allowed to take pictures of them. We saw so many paintings I loved and knew a lot about…so Boo got her own private tour of the collection and now my voice is hoarse..very, very, hoarse. In fact I can barely talk and I also have my strange cough because I ate some ice cream amongst some other tasty French desserts which contain cream. I am now paying for it with phylum in my lungs (my version of lactose intolerance). This train station was featured in the movie, “Hugo”. I loved the “Big Clock”. Then while perusing the museum I found a gorgeous “Tea Room” which I remember my friend/colleague Linda telling me about….”You have to eat there”, she told me. So we did. It was the most gorgeous room ever.

Frack gave me his blue angry bird at the airport and told me to take it with me…so I began sending him emails with it (kind of like Flat Stanley).

After our museum visit, we caught the 69 bus. According to my cousin, one of her tour books suggested taking this bus at night because it looped around and you could see many interesting sights. I was tired from walking all day through the museum, so sitting on a bus sounded good at the time. But it was hot. We had been travelling quite a while when I told Boo we were getting farther and farther away from the downtown core. “Are you sure this thing goes around?” I questioned her. Oddly enough, the buildings started to change too. It was like the tour I went on in New York….really old ornate historical buildings that changed in style as more cheaper buildings were built across the centuries. The building we were passing were plain. “OMG,” I told Boo, “I think we are in Harlem France.” What are you talking about?” She laughed at me.

She wasn’t laughing any more when we turned the next corner and we saw a line up of homeless people being served food on the street. “Look over there” I told her pointing to graffiti walls. “Like I said, I think we are in Harlem, France”. About 2 minutes later, after we passed a cemetery, the bus stopped and the driver ordered everyone off the bus… t’was the end of his route. “Now we are in trouble, ” I thought. “I hope we don’t get mugged”.

We asked the driver how we could get back downtown and he pointed to a bus shelter across the street. Unfortunately when we got there it said the next bus wasn’t arriving for another 25 minutes. Boo thought it might be a good idea to take a taxi, but I was afraid of what the bill was going to be because we were really, really, far away. I looked around and saw lots of buses along the street and then I saw a subway station. We decided to take our chances and go below ground. The information guy seemed nice. I told him…Nous sommes perdu (we are lost). Parlez-vous anglais? Where are we? He laughed at us, gave us a map, and sent us on our way. The subway over there was really cool. It had a round tunnel.

It took us right to a shopping mall Boo wanted to go to in no time at all. We got lost trying to “sortie” out of the place. The stupid green “Sortie” signs we were following to get out of the subway system turned out to be the emergency exit and we got stuck at an entranceway with no where to go. So Boo pushed a button for help and I kind of think it was some sort of help button for emergencies because all of the sudden an alarm sounded. We quickly enlisted in the help of some Parisians to get us out of there. They told us to follow the “blue” sortie signs and we got out of there before someone could come down to arrest us for being stupid idiots.